Whether you are working at a restaurant, a retail store or Chuck E. Cheese, the first day of work is always a little uncomfortable. You want to make the best impression possible and yet you have absolutely no idea what you are doing. When new information comes flying at you one hundred miles an hour, thoughts like, what did I just get myself into? come rushing to mind. It all happens so fast.

Today was my first day of work as an intern for Digital Firefly Marketing. Upon arrival Robert entered my cubicle with a dry erase marker and intention of exhausting its ink on the white board resting above my desk. Before much was said, the board was filled with terms, most of which I had never even heard of. Robert rolled over a chair and put my five-year-old computer to work. The downloading began and I could see the memory in my ole’ girl slowly being eaten away. I guess that’s what happens when you graduate college. Your computer is no longer for music the hippie boy gave you down the hall that you still haven’t listened to. Nonetheless, we continued racing through everything I needed to be successful, which turned out to be quite a lot. All of a sudden it hit me, I am going to become a computer geek.

After Robert’s string of tutorials on websites I didn’t know existed, it was time for our daily meeting. We all gathered for the first time in the conference room. Marissa from the design team in California was called and the meeting was underway. Everyone gave their two, or in some cases three or four cents, as to what they had on their agendas for the day. All I had to say was learning and was that an understatement. I should of said, “Cram as much information as I can into my brain on things I know nearly nothing about,” but the team already knew that. I had to survive my first day of work and after our daily meeting it was game on.

Upon returning my desk after our daily meeting, I was pulled out of my desk. Frank had a few things he waned to teach me next, and by few I mean a lot. First came information from the screaming frog on internal and external linking, keywords, page titles, H1s, and a plethora of other things. It all sounded like a web designer’s twisted version of Frogger if you asked me. Next we started gathering info from pingdom, marketing.grader, whatismyipaddress and moz. It was a lot of information for anyone to soak in, let alone a rookie on her first day of work. I sat there for a moment letting each explanation make an attempt to form some sense in my own head. Right then I decided that if I could survive virtual geology, I could survive my first day of work.

After going over the rest of the audit process, Frank passed the torch to me and I was off to do an audit on my own. He told me not to worry about getting it perfect, and don’t worry I didn’t. I went over my notes and suddenly they looked foreign to me. It was clear that this was going to take me some time to understand. Good thing my superiors have patience, or at least I hope.

Taylor dominated round three of instruction giving Megan and I a lesson on how to manage our clients’ social media accounts. It sounded so simple from the way Taylor explained it, but some clients are pickier than others. I guess you always have that one restaurant patron whose steak isn’t cooked exactly well enough. After our talk with Taylor Megan and I divvied up the workload and created a schedule. I think we are going to make a good team.

The rest of my first day of work was riddled with learning even more about Digital Firefly Marketing’s processes and systems. All of the work was a little tedious, but simple nonetheless, when you understand it that is, which I know I will, eventually.

Moral of the Story

Moral of the story: I survived my first day of work and if I can, you can too! Just mix in a little confidence with an open mind and you’ll be good to go. No matter where you are working, your first day of work is going to be all about learning. Just remember that your boss hired you because you’re right for the job. Learning comes with time so get comfortable, put your thinking cap on and enjoy the ride.